What's keeping my till ringing?

Dave Hiscutt, store manager of Londis Westham Road, in Weymouth, says sales of his American soft drinks range are sure to see an uplift over the sunny bank holiday.

“We go really hard on American stock and we have some incredibly popular Fanta flavours from America,” he says. ”They have been affected by the sugar tax so the cans have gone from 99p to £1.29 but that doesn’t seem to have affected our sales.

”Looking at an average week we will sell 154 cans and that’s just in one flavour. Last summer this jumped to 292 cans of one sku in a week. Flavours include blueberry, grapefruit, mango, pineapple, grape and others.

”Sometimes we won’t be able to get in a flavour for a period due to the stock having to come all the way from America and people will keep coming in asking for it. One guy bought a whole pack of them the minute I brought them off the van.

”It only works so well because I’m the only one in the area that sells them and so people travel to the store especially to buy them.”

Thanks to his location on the seafront, Dave is preparing for sales at his ice cream parlour to go through the roof this weekend. ”We’ve just had a huge delivery of ice cream. We tend to do well over a sunny weekend plus it’s all good margins of around 60 or 70 per cent.

“We also expect to sell a lot of multipack fruity ciders as people will be taking drinks to the beach.”